How fast? · 7:35am Nov 5th, 2018
The Industrial Revolution completely reshaped the world. Among many other things, it brought with it unprecedented travel speeds, far beyond what unaided muscle—or sails—could achieve. But just what were those speeds? (All values are approximate, and for mechanical transportation are based on the late nineteenth century.)
- Human walk in good conditions: 3 mph or 4.8 km/h (a pony might manage 4 mph or 6.4 km/h)
- Human walk in poor conditions: 1–2 mph or 1.6–3.2 km/h (probably similar for a pony)
- Express passenger train: average 25–35 mph or 40–56 km/h, including stops
- Local passenger train: average 15–20 mph or 24–32 km/h, including stops
- Steam ocean liner: cruise 15–20 knots, 17–23 mph, or 28–37 km/h
- Cargo steamship: generally slower, maybe only half as fast
- Windjammer: fast as an ocean liner with favorable winds; similar to a cargo steamer otherwise
- Early airship: not very fast at all, though with weather control and other magic the ponies might do a little better
There’s a difference, though, between how fast transportation is at any given moment and how much distance it covers in, say, a day. Marching infantry throughout history pretty consistently has achieved 20–25 miles or 32–40 km per day; a forced march adds distance not by walking faster but by walking longer (say, twelve hours instead of eight). An express train or a steamship might run steadily for days, so they can achieve hundreds of miles or kilometers a day—when operating under normal conditions. Even so, travel times as presented in MLPFIM and MLPTM are almost always much shorter than they should be, unless Equestria is about the size of Liechtenstein and its world is about the size of Ceres.
They're not very consistent with their travel times either, as in the earlier seasons it took an overnight train to get from Ponyville to Canterlot, and now it's a quick day trip.
If eight seasons of pony have taught me anything, it's this:
They travel at the speed of plot. Same as most shows, sadly.
Also, both are potentially true given what we see in the show: that Equs is teeny tiny & that the Plot has governance over all things.
4963271
technological advances?
4963271
I’d forgotten about the “MMMystery on the Friendship Express” anomaly—the only time the writers made that leg an overnight trip. The face-palming thing about that one is, they could have fixed it so easily by making the destination Manehattan (or another city) instead of Canterlot.
4963309 4963321 4963358
All sadly true, alas.
Oliver has been doing a lot of theorizing that the world is actually very tiny and wrapped around a black hole or something, there's a lot of things like the way their little fake sun and moon move that suggest it.
4963605
An odd but intriguing idea—not one I’d buy into, but definitely worth exploring.